Tara H. Abraham
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035095
- eISBN:
- 9780262335386
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035095.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) has become an icon of the American cybernetics movement and of current work in the cognitive neurosciences. Much of this legacy stems from his classic 1943 work with ...
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Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) has become an icon of the American cybernetics movement and of current work in the cognitive neurosciences. Much of this legacy stems from his classic 1943 work with Walter Pitts on the logic of neural networks, and from his colourful role as chairman of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (1946-1953). This biographical work looks beyond McCulloch’s iconic status by exploring the varied scientific, personal, and institutional contexts of McCulloch’s life. By doing so, the book presents McCulloch as a transdisciplinary investigator who took on many scientific identities beyond that of a cybernetician: scientific philosopher, neurophysiologist, psychiatrist, poet, mentor-collaborator, and engineer, and finally, his public persona towards the end of his life, the rebel genius. The book argues that these identities were neither products of McCulloch’s own will nor were they simply shaped by his institutional contexts. In integrating context and agency, the book as provides a more nuanced and rich understanding of McCulloch’s role in the history of American science as well as the institutional contexts of scientific investigations of the brain and mind: in particular at Yale University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book argues that one of McCulloch’s most important contributions was opening up new ways of understanding the brain: no longer simply an object of medical investigation, the brain became the centre of the multidisciplinary neurosciences.Less
Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) has become an icon of the American cybernetics movement and of current work in the cognitive neurosciences. Much of this legacy stems from his classic 1943 work with Walter Pitts on the logic of neural networks, and from his colourful role as chairman of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (1946-1953). This biographical work looks beyond McCulloch’s iconic status by exploring the varied scientific, personal, and institutional contexts of McCulloch’s life. By doing so, the book presents McCulloch as a transdisciplinary investigator who took on many scientific identities beyond that of a cybernetician: scientific philosopher, neurophysiologist, psychiatrist, poet, mentor-collaborator, and engineer, and finally, his public persona towards the end of his life, the rebel genius. The book argues that these identities were neither products of McCulloch’s own will nor were they simply shaped by his institutional contexts. In integrating context and agency, the book as provides a more nuanced and rich understanding of McCulloch’s role in the history of American science as well as the institutional contexts of scientific investigations of the brain and mind: in particular at Yale University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book argues that one of McCulloch’s most important contributions was opening up new ways of understanding the brain: no longer simply an object of medical investigation, the brain became the centre of the multidisciplinary neurosciences.
Seb Franklin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029537
- eISBN:
- 9780262331135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029537.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter examines the interdisciplinary field of cybernetics as an emblematic site for the movement of digital principles from specific, technical applications to imprecisely deployed metaphors. ...
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This chapter examines the interdisciplinary field of cybernetics as an emblematic site for the movement of digital principles from specific, technical applications to imprecisely deployed metaphors. The chapter tracks specific terminology and speculative claims about the possibility of behavioural prediction from tightly delimited work in ballistics, psychology, information theory, and computer science to highly general (and generalizing) applications in anthropology, economic theory, and management. In so doing the chapter demonstrates the historical and conceptual dynamics of control, as well as their proximity to the tendential expansion in space and time that characterizes capitalist accumulation.Less
This chapter examines the interdisciplinary field of cybernetics as an emblematic site for the movement of digital principles from specific, technical applications to imprecisely deployed metaphors. The chapter tracks specific terminology and speculative claims about the possibility of behavioural prediction from tightly delimited work in ballistics, psychology, information theory, and computer science to highly general (and generalizing) applications in anthropology, economic theory, and management. In so doing the chapter demonstrates the historical and conceptual dynamics of control, as well as their proximity to the tendential expansion in space and time that characterizes capitalist accumulation.
Andrew Pilsch
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517901028
- eISBN:
- 9781452957685
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517901028.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book argues that transhumanism should be taken more seriously as a Utopian force in the present. Combatting the widespread idea that transhumanism is a naive and dangerous reframing of the most ...
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This book argues that transhumanism should be taken more seriously as a Utopian force in the present. Combatting the widespread idea that transhumanism is a naive and dangerous reframing of the most excessive forms humanist thought, this book situates the contemporary transhumanist movement within the longer history of a rhetorical mode Pilsch calls "evolutionary futurism." Evolutionary futurism is a way of arguing about technology that suggests that global telecommunications technologies, in expanding the geographic range of human thought, radically reshape the future of the human species. Evolutionary futurist argumentation makes the case that we, as a species, are on the cusp of a radical explosion in cognitive, physical, and cultural intelligence. Transhumanism surveys the varying uses of evolutionary futurism throughout the 20th century, as it appears in a wide array of fields. This book unearths evolutionary futurist argumentation in modernist avant-garde poetry, theosophy, science fiction, post-structural philosophy, Christian mysticism, media theory, conceptual art, and online media culture. Ultimately, the book suggests that evolutionary futurism, in the age of the collapse of the state as a unit for imagining Utopia, works by highlighting the human as the limit that must be overcome if we are to imagine new futures for our culture, our planet, and ourselves. Less
This book argues that transhumanism should be taken more seriously as a Utopian force in the present. Combatting the widespread idea that transhumanism is a naive and dangerous reframing of the most excessive forms humanist thought, this book situates the contemporary transhumanist movement within the longer history of a rhetorical mode Pilsch calls "evolutionary futurism." Evolutionary futurism is a way of arguing about technology that suggests that global telecommunications technologies, in expanding the geographic range of human thought, radically reshape the future of the human species. Evolutionary futurist argumentation makes the case that we, as a species, are on the cusp of a radical explosion in cognitive, physical, and cultural intelligence. Transhumanism surveys the varying uses of evolutionary futurism throughout the 20th century, as it appears in a wide array of fields. This book unearths evolutionary futurist argumentation in modernist avant-garde poetry, theosophy, science fiction, post-structural philosophy, Christian mysticism, media theory, conceptual art, and online media culture. Ultimately, the book suggests that evolutionary futurism, in the age of the collapse of the state as a unit for imagining Utopia, works by highlighting the human as the limit that must be overcome if we are to imagine new futures for our culture, our planet, and ourselves.
Tara H. Abraham
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035095
- eISBN:
- 9780262335386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035095.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter offers an interpretation of the cybernetics movement that places McCulloch at the centre of the story. By doing so, it illustrates that McCulloch’s cybernetic project can be best ...
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This chapter offers an interpretation of the cybernetics movement that places McCulloch at the centre of the story. By doing so, it illustrates that McCulloch’s cybernetic project can be best understood in light of his interest in psychiatric foundations and the problem of mind and brain. Focusing on McCulloch’s translation of his psychiatric work into the language of cybernetics, his rhetorical strategies in promoting cybernetics, and the challenges he faced, the chapter also highlights the transdisciplinary nature of cybernetics. Further, it illustrates how, despite the origin stories of McCulloch and other members of the cybernetics group, and despite its association with the American unity of science movement, the cybernetics group was more disunified than is commonly argued.Less
This chapter offers an interpretation of the cybernetics movement that places McCulloch at the centre of the story. By doing so, it illustrates that McCulloch’s cybernetic project can be best understood in light of his interest in psychiatric foundations and the problem of mind and brain. Focusing on McCulloch’s translation of his psychiatric work into the language of cybernetics, his rhetorical strategies in promoting cybernetics, and the challenges he faced, the chapter also highlights the transdisciplinary nature of cybernetics. Further, it illustrates how, despite the origin stories of McCulloch and other members of the cybernetics group, and despite its association with the American unity of science movement, the cybernetics group was more disunified than is commonly argued.
Seb Franklin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029537
- eISBN:
- 9780262331135
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029537.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This book addresses the conditions of knowledge that make the concept of the “information economy” possible while at the same time obscuring its deleterious effects on material social spaces. In so ...
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This book addresses the conditions of knowledge that make the concept of the “information economy” possible while at the same time obscuring its deleterious effects on material social spaces. In so doing, the book traces three intertwined threads: the relationships among information, labor, and social management that emerged in the nineteenth century; the mid-twentieth-century diffusion of computational metaphors; and the appearance of informatic principles in certain contemporary socioeconomic and cultural practices. Drawing on critical theory, media theory, and the history of science, the book names control as the episteme grounding late capitalism. Beyond any specific device or set of technically mediated practices, digitality functions within this episteme as the logical basis for reshaped concepts of labor, subjectivity, and collectivity, as well as for the intensification of older modes of exclusion and dispossession. In tracking the pervasiveness of this logical mode into the present, the book locates the cultural traces of control across a diverse body of objects and practices, from cybernetics to economic theory and management styles, and from concepts of language and subjectivity to literary texts, films, and video games.Less
This book addresses the conditions of knowledge that make the concept of the “information economy” possible while at the same time obscuring its deleterious effects on material social spaces. In so doing, the book traces three intertwined threads: the relationships among information, labor, and social management that emerged in the nineteenth century; the mid-twentieth-century diffusion of computational metaphors; and the appearance of informatic principles in certain contemporary socioeconomic and cultural practices. Drawing on critical theory, media theory, and the history of science, the book names control as the episteme grounding late capitalism. Beyond any specific device or set of technically mediated practices, digitality functions within this episteme as the logical basis for reshaped concepts of labor, subjectivity, and collectivity, as well as for the intensification of older modes of exclusion and dispossession. In tracking the pervasiveness of this logical mode into the present, the book locates the cultural traces of control across a diverse body of objects and practices, from cybernetics to economic theory and management styles, and from concepts of language and subjectivity to literary texts, films, and video games.
Bernhard Siegert
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263752
- eISBN:
- 9780823268962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263752.003.0011
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
Doors are architectural media that function as cultural techniques because they operate the primordial difference of architecture—that between inside and outside—and at the same time reflect this ...
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Doors are architectural media that function as cultural techniques because they operate the primordial difference of architecture—that between inside and outside—and at the same time reflect this difference and thereby establish a system comprised of opening and closing operations. Taking Adorno’s lamentation that one does not know how to close a door anymore and Musil’s statement that doors are a thing of the past as points of departure, the chapter highlights epochs of the symbolic order as it is media historically connected to the history of the door. As confirmed by ethnography and historians of antiquity the door has always been linked to the law – be it the law of the city, divine or paternal law – an idea that culminates in Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” and in Jacques Lacan’s notion that the door is the symbol par excellence. In the Merode altar by Robert Campin (1425) thus the meaning of the door that processes the distinction between the sacred and the profane is transferred to the real unfolding of the triptych. The revolving doors and the automatic sliding doors of the twentieth century are no material implementations of the symbolic order anymore but thermodynamic and governmental machines that prefigure cybernetic machines in which the distinction between inside and outside as been replaced by the distinction between on and off.Less
Doors are architectural media that function as cultural techniques because they operate the primordial difference of architecture—that between inside and outside—and at the same time reflect this difference and thereby establish a system comprised of opening and closing operations. Taking Adorno’s lamentation that one does not know how to close a door anymore and Musil’s statement that doors are a thing of the past as points of departure, the chapter highlights epochs of the symbolic order as it is media historically connected to the history of the door. As confirmed by ethnography and historians of antiquity the door has always been linked to the law – be it the law of the city, divine or paternal law – an idea that culminates in Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” and in Jacques Lacan’s notion that the door is the symbol par excellence. In the Merode altar by Robert Campin (1425) thus the meaning of the door that processes the distinction between the sacred and the profane is transferred to the real unfolding of the triptych. The revolving doors and the automatic sliding doors of the twentieth century are no material implementations of the symbolic order anymore but thermodynamic and governmental machines that prefigure cybernetic machines in which the distinction between inside and outside as been replaced by the distinction between on and off.
Inge Hinterwaldner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035040
- eISBN:
- 9780262335546
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035040.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
It can be shown that the different conceptions of ‘simulation’ (the one of culture critique on the one hand and the denomination of technical applications on the other) that seem to be incompatible ...
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It can be shown that the different conceptions of ‘simulation’ (the one of culture critique on the one hand and the denomination of technical applications on the other) that seem to be incompatible with each other can be reconciled on a single spectrum. Its basis in models, its replacement of reality, its lack of reference and of precession of the referent are some pejorative characteristics often emphasized in media philosophy with regard to simulations, for which the sciences applying computer simulations have no use for. It helps crossing over the views that first seem opposite to each other, but that turn out to be compatible if its root in reality is recognized and thus the representational logic is accepted at least according to the intention. The chapter combines ideas of the 'simulacrum' retrieved in the natural sciences with traces of cybernetic thinking in media studies. The whole study builds on a definition of computer simulation in the technical sense as the involvement with and the act of execution f a dynamic mathematic or procedural model that projects, depicts, or recreates a system or process.Less
It can be shown that the different conceptions of ‘simulation’ (the one of culture critique on the one hand and the denomination of technical applications on the other) that seem to be incompatible with each other can be reconciled on a single spectrum. Its basis in models, its replacement of reality, its lack of reference and of precession of the referent are some pejorative characteristics often emphasized in media philosophy with regard to simulations, for which the sciences applying computer simulations have no use for. It helps crossing over the views that first seem opposite to each other, but that turn out to be compatible if its root in reality is recognized and thus the representational logic is accepted at least according to the intention. The chapter combines ideas of the 'simulacrum' retrieved in the natural sciences with traces of cybernetic thinking in media studies. The whole study builds on a definition of computer simulation in the technical sense as the involvement with and the act of execution f a dynamic mathematic or procedural model that projects, depicts, or recreates a system or process.
Benjamin Peters
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034180
- eISBN:
- 9780262334198
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034180.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Russian Politics
This chapter introduces the most prominent of the Soviet network projects: the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS) Project, its lead visionary Viktor Glushkov, his team, and the ...
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This chapter introduces the most prominent of the Soviet network projects: the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS) Project, its lead visionary Viktor Glushkov, his team, and the surrounding institutional landscape in 1962-1969 are described. The full decentralized and interactive ambitions of the project are described as first formulated, including virtual finance and automated economic planning. A snapshot of the playful even work culture of cyberneticists in Cybertonia suggests a local culture of camaraderie, resistance, and cleverness, despite the visions of building a single nationwide decentralized command economy. Initial informal institutional obstacles, including a broken alliance between two prominent research institutes, Glushkov’s Institute of Cybernetics in Kiev and Fedorenko’s Central Economic Mathematical Institute in Moscow, are also described.Less
This chapter introduces the most prominent of the Soviet network projects: the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS) Project, its lead visionary Viktor Glushkov, his team, and the surrounding institutional landscape in 1962-1969 are described. The full decentralized and interactive ambitions of the project are described as first formulated, including virtual finance and automated economic planning. A snapshot of the playful even work culture of cyberneticists in Cybertonia suggests a local culture of camaraderie, resistance, and cleverness, despite the visions of building a single nationwide decentralized command economy. Initial informal institutional obstacles, including a broken alliance between two prominent research institutes, Glushkov’s Institute of Cybernetics in Kiev and Fedorenko’s Central Economic Mathematical Institute in Moscow, are also described.
Benjamin H. Bratton
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029575
- eISBN:
- 9780262330183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029575.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter introduces The Stack model in detail. The Stack is a platform, and despite our familiarity with that word, we do not have sufficient understanding of platforms as technical and ...
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This chapter introduces The Stack model in detail. The Stack is a platform, and despite our familiarity with that word, we do not have sufficient understanding of platforms as technical and institutional systems. Comparing them to States and Markets, we can appreciate how they enable unique kinds of sovereignty, both geographic and subjective. This chapter considers some key historical examples of computing platforms used to model and reform entire societies and economies, and considers these as precedent lessons our Stack model. It discusses the technical structure of software and hardware stacks, and abstracts them as a general model for complex systems architectures. The chapter also introduces the six layers of The Stack, Earth layer, Cloud layer, City layer, Address layer, Interface layer, and User layer.Less
This chapter introduces The Stack model in detail. The Stack is a platform, and despite our familiarity with that word, we do not have sufficient understanding of platforms as technical and institutional systems. Comparing them to States and Markets, we can appreciate how they enable unique kinds of sovereignty, both geographic and subjective. This chapter considers some key historical examples of computing platforms used to model and reform entire societies and economies, and considers these as precedent lessons our Stack model. It discusses the technical structure of software and hardware stacks, and abstracts them as a general model for complex systems architectures. The chapter also introduces the six layers of The Stack, Earth layer, Cloud layer, City layer, Address layer, Interface layer, and User layer.
Ute Holl
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823253807
- eISBN:
- 9780823260966
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823253807.003.0014
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the example of Bateson and Margaret Mead, who as anthropologists made use of photography and film to record Balinese characters and culture. They took pictures and shot films of ...
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This chapter examines the example of Bateson and Margaret Mead, who as anthropologists made use of photography and film to record Balinese characters and culture. They took pictures and shot films of dances and trances and, as Holl suggests, became exposed to a magic that was the consequence not so much of Balinese trance techniques as of cinematographic technologies that they themselves had brought to Bali. In fact, they ignored not only the cinematographic time structure that creates an imaginary effect through the conversion of discrete pictures into movement perception, but also the illusionary and trance-producing aspects of film. They experienced the difficulties (perhaps the impossibility) of achieving a balance between scientific self-mastery and abandoning selfcontrol.Less
This chapter examines the example of Bateson and Margaret Mead, who as anthropologists made use of photography and film to record Balinese characters and culture. They took pictures and shot films of dances and trances and, as Holl suggests, became exposed to a magic that was the consequence not so much of Balinese trance techniques as of cinematographic technologies that they themselves had brought to Bali. In fact, they ignored not only the cinematographic time structure that creates an imaginary effect through the conversion of discrete pictures into movement perception, but also the illusionary and trance-producing aspects of film. They experienced the difficulties (perhaps the impossibility) of achieving a balance between scientific self-mastery and abandoning selfcontrol.
Gwyneth Jones
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780853237839
- eISBN:
- 9781786945389
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853237839.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This essay is the first in the book’s Science, Fiction and Reality section. It was originally a paper read at a conference held at the University of Teesside in April 1995 and was later published in ...
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This essay is the first in the book’s Science, Fiction and Reality section. It was originally a paper read at a conference held at the University of Teesside in April 1995 and was later published in The Governance of Cyberspace. The essay talks about the evolution of science fiction and how it’s easy to spot when it has been overtaken by the development of technology; specifically in computers, artificial intelligence, robotics, and cybernetics. In her discussion of technology and cyberspace, Jones alludes to the possibility of consciousness, self-awareness and freedom of information, and makes reference to the science fiction novels of William Gibson and Pat Cadigan.Less
This essay is the first in the book’s Science, Fiction and Reality section. It was originally a paper read at a conference held at the University of Teesside in April 1995 and was later published in The Governance of Cyberspace. The essay talks about the evolution of science fiction and how it’s easy to spot when it has been overtaken by the development of technology; specifically in computers, artificial intelligence, robotics, and cybernetics. In her discussion of technology and cyberspace, Jones alludes to the possibility of consciousness, self-awareness and freedom of information, and makes reference to the science fiction novels of William Gibson and Pat Cadigan.
Chris Pak
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382844
- eISBN:
- 9781786945426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382844.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The final chapter analyses Robinson’s multiple award winning Mars trilogy. It considers cybernetic themes in conceptions of terraforming and biospheres, and synthesises two related concepts, Jed ...
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The final chapter analyses Robinson’s multiple award winning Mars trilogy. It considers cybernetic themes in conceptions of terraforming and biospheres, and synthesises two related concepts, Jed Rasula’s “composting” and Thierry Bardini’s “junk,” to characterise the ramified dialogism of terraforming narratives. It explores pastoral images of the garden and, through Simon Hailwood, brings to bear Nagel’s notion of intersubjectivity and the process of “stepping back” to account for the change of perspective toward the natural world experienced by various characters. This section continues with a discussion of the relationship between science and nature and its implications for environmental philosophy and science fiction before ending with reflections on how terraforming narratives combine myth, science, politics, social inquiry and aesthetics to explore human relationships to their environments.Less
The final chapter analyses Robinson’s multiple award winning Mars trilogy. It considers cybernetic themes in conceptions of terraforming and biospheres, and synthesises two related concepts, Jed Rasula’s “composting” and Thierry Bardini’s “junk,” to characterise the ramified dialogism of terraforming narratives. It explores pastoral images of the garden and, through Simon Hailwood, brings to bear Nagel’s notion of intersubjectivity and the process of “stepping back” to account for the change of perspective toward the natural world experienced by various characters. This section continues with a discussion of the relationship between science and nature and its implications for environmental philosophy and science fiction before ending with reflections on how terraforming narratives combine myth, science, politics, social inquiry and aesthetics to explore human relationships to their environments.
Anthony Chaney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631738
- eISBN:
- 9781469631752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631738.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This chapter explores double-bind theory and the concept of power, including the sexist tendency among proponents to blame the mother. Similarly, radicals, liberals, and secular existentialists ...
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This chapter explores double-bind theory and the concept of power, including the sexist tendency among proponents to blame the mother. Similarly, radicals, liberals, and secular existentialists challenged the “tragic turn” as bourgeois accommodation to status quo power relations. The holism of systemic approaches foregrounded the old problem of whether nature supplies an ethic. Bateson and the double-bind research team struggled to account for power in the schizophrenic family in a way that blamed neither victim nor victimizer. Bateson's recognition of progressive stalemate in the schizophrenic family drew on the systems theory concept of runaway. Runaway in arms race policies, in turn, reflected political and theoretical conflicts between Norbert Weiner and John von Neumann, the leading mathematicians of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics. In two essays, Bateson critiques the centrality of power in von Neumann's game theory. Meanwhile, Bateson's conflicts with the more pragmatic research team members, such as Jay Haley, lead him to cast about for a new direction. His eulogy for Frieda Fromm-Reichmann echoed a similar debate over political quietism between Reinhold Niebuhr and Richard Niebuhr.Less
This chapter explores double-bind theory and the concept of power, including the sexist tendency among proponents to blame the mother. Similarly, radicals, liberals, and secular existentialists challenged the “tragic turn” as bourgeois accommodation to status quo power relations. The holism of systemic approaches foregrounded the old problem of whether nature supplies an ethic. Bateson and the double-bind research team struggled to account for power in the schizophrenic family in a way that blamed neither victim nor victimizer. Bateson's recognition of progressive stalemate in the schizophrenic family drew on the systems theory concept of runaway. Runaway in arms race policies, in turn, reflected political and theoretical conflicts between Norbert Weiner and John von Neumann, the leading mathematicians of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics. In two essays, Bateson critiques the centrality of power in von Neumann's game theory. Meanwhile, Bateson's conflicts with the more pragmatic research team members, such as Jay Haley, lead him to cast about for a new direction. His eulogy for Frieda Fromm-Reichmann echoed a similar debate over political quietism between Reinhold Niebuhr and Richard Niebuhr.
Anthony Chaney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631738
- eISBN:
- 9781469631752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631738.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This chapter places Bateson's work with dolphins within a broader 1960s "dolphin mystique"--a cultural site where anxieties over modern science’s physical models went unresolved. Most associated with ...
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This chapter places Bateson's work with dolphins within a broader 1960s "dolphin mystique"--a cultural site where anxieties over modern science’s physical models went unresolved. Most associated with scientist John C. Lilly, the dolphin mystique had futurist, utilitarian, and romantic components, also found in a similar "outer space mystique." The chapter shows how Lilly's and Bateson's research goals differed through a further substantiation of the sources of Bateson's thought: the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (his theory of play, the concepts of positive feedback, negative feedback, servomechanisms, and the naturalization of teleology); and his father William Bateson and his career amid the ongoing conflict between Darwinist and Lamarckian theories of evolution. In Hawaii, Bateson expressed his isolation from potential peers and research frustrations in letters to old friend and Darwin granddaughter/scholar Nora Barlow. This isolation, however, allowed Bateson to articulate a justification for scientific inquiry that was neither utilitarian nor a value-neutral pursuit of truth, but an effort to establish an accurate depiction of the relationship between nature and the human self, which he called the riddle of the Sphinx.Less
This chapter places Bateson's work with dolphins within a broader 1960s "dolphin mystique"--a cultural site where anxieties over modern science’s physical models went unresolved. Most associated with scientist John C. Lilly, the dolphin mystique had futurist, utilitarian, and romantic components, also found in a similar "outer space mystique." The chapter shows how Lilly's and Bateson's research goals differed through a further substantiation of the sources of Bateson's thought: the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (his theory of play, the concepts of positive feedback, negative feedback, servomechanisms, and the naturalization of teleology); and his father William Bateson and his career amid the ongoing conflict between Darwinist and Lamarckian theories of evolution. In Hawaii, Bateson expressed his isolation from potential peers and research frustrations in letters to old friend and Darwin granddaughter/scholar Nora Barlow. This isolation, however, allowed Bateson to articulate a justification for scientific inquiry that was neither utilitarian nor a value-neutral pursuit of truth, but an effort to establish an accurate depiction of the relationship between nature and the human self, which he called the riddle of the Sphinx.
George F. Flaherty
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520291065
- eISBN:
- 9780520964938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291065.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
Mexico’s successful bid to host 1968 Olympics necessitated the management of the country’s holistic and cohesive modern image for the worldwide audiences. Chapter 3 analyses the integration and ...
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Mexico’s successful bid to host 1968 Olympics necessitated the management of the country’s holistic and cohesive modern image for the worldwide audiences. Chapter 3 analyses the integration and mobilization of various design disciplines—especially built environment and visual communications—to produce and convey such an image. Focusing on the immersive participatory street environments designed for the Games, the chapter examines work of planner-architect Eduardo Terrazas, head of the urban design for the Mexican Olympic organizing committee—and compares them to the ideas promoted by the neo-avant-garde kinetic artists. It thus shows the seemingly neutral notions such as interdisciplinary collaboration, Gestalt psychology, and cybernetic responsiveness engender also frameworks of hierarchy, management, and the cult of expertise. The analysis demonstrates kinetic environments and technologies to be inherently open-ended and unstable, clearing space for the interventions of 68 Movement.Less
Mexico’s successful bid to host 1968 Olympics necessitated the management of the country’s holistic and cohesive modern image for the worldwide audiences. Chapter 3 analyses the integration and mobilization of various design disciplines—especially built environment and visual communications—to produce and convey such an image. Focusing on the immersive participatory street environments designed for the Games, the chapter examines work of planner-architect Eduardo Terrazas, head of the urban design for the Mexican Olympic organizing committee—and compares them to the ideas promoted by the neo-avant-garde kinetic artists. It thus shows the seemingly neutral notions such as interdisciplinary collaboration, Gestalt psychology, and cybernetic responsiveness engender also frameworks of hierarchy, management, and the cult of expertise. The analysis demonstrates kinetic environments and technologies to be inherently open-ended and unstable, clearing space for the interventions of 68 Movement.
Andrew Pilsch
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517901028
- eISBN:
- 9781452957685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517901028.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Chapter 1 explores the modernist roots of evolutionary futurism through the uptake of Friedrich Nietzsche by the European avant-garde. Foregrounding the work of Mina Loy and P.D. Ouspensky, the ...
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Chapter 1 explores the modernist roots of evolutionary futurism through the uptake of Friedrich Nietzsche by the European avant-garde. Foregrounding the work of Mina Loy and P.D. Ouspensky, the chapter argues that modernism embodies evolutionary futurism through what I call an "inner transhumanism."Less
Chapter 1 explores the modernist roots of evolutionary futurism through the uptake of Friedrich Nietzsche by the European avant-garde. Foregrounding the work of Mina Loy and P.D. Ouspensky, the chapter argues that modernism embodies evolutionary futurism through what I call an "inner transhumanism."
Andrew Pilsch
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517901028
- eISBN:
- 9781452957685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517901028.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Chapter 2 discusses the "Superman Boom," a science fiction publishing phenomenon in the 1930s that coincided with the dawn of the Golden Age of SF. In addition to the fiction, this chapter documents ...
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Chapter 2 discusses the "Superman Boom," a science fiction publishing phenomenon in the 1930s that coincided with the dawn of the Golden Age of SF. In addition to the fiction, this chapter documents the fan response that positioned SF readers as genetic supermen and inspired plans for fan utopian communities.Less
Chapter 2 discusses the "Superman Boom," a science fiction publishing phenomenon in the 1930s that coincided with the dawn of the Golden Age of SF. In addition to the fiction, this chapter documents the fan response that positioned SF readers as genetic supermen and inspired plans for fan utopian communities.
Andrew Pilsch
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517901028
- eISBN:
- 9781452957685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517901028.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Chapter 3 considers suffering as a problem in transhumanism by juxtaposing the hedonistic abolitionism advocated by Oxford philosopher David Pearce to the Christian mystical transhumanism of Pierre ...
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Chapter 3 considers suffering as a problem in transhumanism by juxtaposing the hedonistic abolitionism advocated by Oxford philosopher David Pearce to the Christian mystical transhumanism of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this juxtaposition, the evolutionary vanguard is established as crucial for evolutionary futurist utopian thought.Less
Chapter 3 considers suffering as a problem in transhumanism by juxtaposing the hedonistic abolitionism advocated by Oxford philosopher David Pearce to the Christian mystical transhumanism of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In this juxtaposition, the evolutionary vanguard is established as crucial for evolutionary futurist utopian thought.
Andrew Pilsch
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517901028
- eISBN:
- 9781452957685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517901028.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Chapter 4 argues for the value of artistic practice to imagining evolutionary futures. Tracing the transhuman art movement of the 1980s, it suggests that contemporary aesthetic practices, ...
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Chapter 4 argues for the value of artistic practice to imagining evolutionary futures. Tracing the transhuman art movement of the 1980s, it suggests that contemporary aesthetic practices, specifically the emergent New Aesthetic movement and the online circulation of meme images, are increasingly engaged in mapping an emergent global consciousness.Less
Chapter 4 argues for the value of artistic practice to imagining evolutionary futures. Tracing the transhuman art movement of the 1980s, it suggests that contemporary aesthetic practices, specifically the emergent New Aesthetic movement and the online circulation of meme images, are increasingly engaged in mapping an emergent global consciousness.
Andrew Pilsch
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517901028
- eISBN:
- 9781452957685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517901028.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The conclusion considers two recently emergent radical political ideas, accelerationism and xenofeminism, as evolutionary futurist practices of Utopia.
The conclusion considers two recently emergent radical political ideas, accelerationism and xenofeminism, as evolutionary futurist practices of Utopia.
